


perfect little satellites

by tatou



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Gen, HumanAU, M/M, Self Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-28 08:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatou/pseuds/tatou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>( this is so you'll know the sound</p><p>of someone who loves you from the ground )</p>
            </blockquote>





	perfect little satellites

**Author's Note:**

> For [Emi,](http://thedustyleaves.tumblr.com) who prompted and requested this ages ago, and for [PTomlin](http://ptomlins.tumblr.com) as well, whom I have stayed up with many a night to talk about ghosts, space, and all the weird little things in between. I love you both very much.  
>  
> 
> I implore you all to listen to [this](http://youtu.be/dql8aci5y50) song as you read, as it was the main source of inspiration for this fic.

“Click-click: tick-tick

Clock snips time in two

Lap of rain

In the drain pipe

Two o'clock

And never you.

Never you, down the evening,

I cannot

Cry, or even smile

Acidly or bitter-sweetly

For never you and incompletely.

Things surround me;

I could touch

Soap or toothbrush

Desk or chair.

Never mind the three dimensions

All is flat, and you not there.

Letters, paper, stamps

And white. And black.

typewritten-you, and there

It is.

The trickle, liquid trickle

Of rain in drain-pipe

Is voice enough

For me tonight.

And the click-click

Hard quick click-click

Of the clock

Is pain enough, enough heart-beat

For me tonight.

The narrow cot,

The iron bed

Is space enough

And warmth enough...

Enough, enough.

To bed and sleep

And tearless creep

The formless seconds

Minutes hours

And never you

The raindrops weep

And never you

And tick-tick

tick-tick

         pass the hours.

-Sylvia Plath, _The Unabridged Journals_

.

 

A question: what terrifies people most?

 

He thinks on this as he boards the bus and swipes in his transit card, avoiding every errant gaze as he shuffles past and finds a seat.

 

It is late December. He wears heavy coat and heavier scarf, buried to oblivion both within their fabrics and within himself. It is cold but he cannot feel it. This should be a victory considering his hate of the cold, but it feels like nothing.

 

He gathers a list in his head:

 

People fear riots.

 

People fear wilderness.

 

They fear disease, and they fear limitations, and they fear success and they fear pain. The sky is feared for there is little knowledge on what lies beyond, the ocean is feared for there is little knowledge on what lies below. There are patterns here: the unknown. That which provides little information, that which when you creep close and put your eye to what details are offered sends shivers down your spine, leaves you regretting your curiosity, second-guessing your bravery.

 

His eyes are tired, bloodshot. The rims are puffy and pink. He sleeps only because they leak copiously at night and dry out, leaving him exhausted and heavy-lidded. Every night in his dreams, there is nothing but crackling static.

 

People fear war.

 

His father feared illness. His mother feared fire. Jack feared loneliness.

 

Is Jack lonely now, wherever he is?

 

Panic closes his throat. Shutting his eyes against garish sunlight, Aster listens: he hears newspapers rustling, the jolt hiss creak of the fat, exhausted bus's slow lurch towards the next stop, the tinny feedback of someone's shitty mp3 player blasting too loudly through shitty headphones. He starts another list: long unopened books packed neatly into a box beneath his bed, all marked with a name not his own.

 

A Synopsis of the North American Lagomorpha, by Raymond E. Hall.

 

The Story of the Heavens, by Sir Robert S. Ball.

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey.

 

The bus hits a pothole, and he is temporarily jolted from his thoughts. The bus's passengers groan and settle in again, bitching about tax money going to waste on fat politicians' timeshares and expensive whores instead of fixing the city up.

 

He resumes his list-making, working from memory.

 

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame.

 

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, the Finca Vigia Edition.

 

When the pain has passed, Aster opens his eyes again. His stop is not for another two blocks. He stands anyway, clutching a leathery handle overhead to keep his balance as the bus sways. It is Saturday: the buses don't see much traffic until after ten.

 

People fear monsters.

 

People fear darkness.

 

People fear death, and they fear ghosts, and they fear time.

 

Last night, a ghost touched his cheek.

 

**.**

 

In the mornings when sunlight shoulders rudely past his blinds, he stands in the square middle of the house (if he braces himself, stands with both toes touching the cream-colored, chipped tile, he is precisely in the suspended belly of his home. they measured, once, to make sure), and he looks without moving over the furniture, the windows and the door. He wonders the same thing every morning: where has all the noise gone?

 

It is never hard to wake up. He does not have to force himself: like an automaton, he stirs and blinks awake in a slow and exact roll of joints. He shifts onto his side to read the digital clock- eight AM- and goes to the bathroom to vomit. The nausea wears off by the time he has dressed, but by then it has left him sallow and tired, dry-mouthed no matter how much water he drinks.

 

The static of his dreams clings to him until he has been fully roused, and even then he senses it itching and slithering around the house's floors like a snake's shed skin, waiting.

 

Dressed, showered and teeth cleaned, he returns to his bed and lies down. He dozes until nine-thirty AM, where he receives a phone call from North, and then takes the bus down to the workshop, where he paints and assists until nine PM, with two intervals between for rest.

 

North does not know about the hauntings. He has worried enough about Aster already. There is no need to give cause for more.

 

.

 

Today, Saturday, he goes somewhere new.

 

He smoked a joint earlier to escape some anxiety, but as he goes up the steps and knocks quietly, the buzz of the neon 'PSYCHIC READINGS' sign affixed behind the window makes his skin crawl. He does not have time to turn back; the door flies open and a tiny woman ushers him into a room full of mirrors and mauve-colored cushions on comfortable chairs.

 

There exists a power in mirrors that few realize and many capitalize upon. A single glance can leave you utterly disgusted, mildly pleased or fiercely confident. A longer look, a deeper gaze guts you from the inside out, turns you into a beast: teeth too long, skin too burnt, too spotted, hair too unkempt. Figure all wrong. Eyes that belong on a corpse, lips dry and tasteless.

 

Aster looks at the medium and wonders what she sees in her reflection. She is pretty, but when she turns her head just so her eyes become shadowed, white teeth hidden behind grim lips. When she observes her reflection and fixes her makeup, does she see spectres behind her?

 

Gesturing for Aster to settle into an armchair, the woman chats idly, offering tea, coffee, or water. He takes coffee. She prepares it and sets the cups on her neat desk, joining him in the gauzy little office.

 

As she introduces herself, he looks around the office. There are framed decks of oddly illustrated cards and a variety of multicolored feathers strung about. Everything is a royal color, deep blue or deep green or deep purple.

 

Her name is Ana, short for something he does not catch. Her eyes, he is surprised to find, are violently lavender.

 

“You want me to find someone.”

 

“Yes.”

 

She pushes a little container of sugar packets towards him, and he rips one open mechanically, doling it into his drink. As he reaches for the spoon she has set out onto a napkin for him, her hand snaps forward and closes over his wrist. Alarmed, Aster tries pulling away, nearly spilling the coffee, but she quiets him, eyes going distant. “It's alright.” She tells him dreamily. “I'm just reading you.”

 

Within less than a minute she has released him, and her hands smooth over the warm porcelain of her cup, bringing it to her lips. She looks startled herself; how much did she glimpse?

 

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

 

He swallows his discomfort with some coffee. She is the first medium he has ever visited; he is not used to the oddities. Again, “Yes.”

 

She smooths her hair behind her ear, taking a moment to compose herself, looking queenly in the midday light of her office home. A calendar behind her desk tracks the lunar cycles. “When do you want me to start?”

 

“Tomorrow.” Aster says.

 

She does not look surprised at his haste: she has likely seen him before in the form of others, all their own persons and sharing always the deep grief that drives them to denial, sleepless nights and glimpses of shadows that waver in their doorways.

 

They discuss payment and share contact information. As Aster is leaving, he takes a cursory glance back at the medium and falters. She is staring miserably down at her hands.

 

He wonders if he should say something, but she looks out of it so he flees. He gets on the bus and sits in the back to hide his confusion. He pulls his sleeves down to cover his wrists and the blue veins that crackle like lightning over his hands and wonders what she saw. He did not think she would try to read him. He wishes he could have given her warning. Pain like this is not meant to be glimpsed accidentally.

 

.

 

A memory: Jack's death was sudden, and, like a blow from a steel bat, came blunt and star-shatteringly hard over the back of his head.

 

Over everyone's head.

 

The days that followed confused him. Aster was adamant in his denial, closing himself up in his room and climbing out the window over the ledge to Jack's own, pawing at the window like a lost cat when he found it locked, the room empty. It confused him then, and it still does. Death was not new to him, but with Jack suddenly the fear seemed all-encompassing, greedy to suck the joy from Aster's world. For days he stared impertinently at every thing that fell into his line of sight, examined people with dedication. How can something so stellar, so miraculous as a human mind, a living breathing thing suddenly cease to be? How can so many millions of thoughts and memories and loves and breaths grind to a permanent stop? Where does it all go?

 

Where has Jack _gone_?

 

Even after the funeral, the numbness that befell them all from the beginning still hung like a shroud, a permanent mourning veil. His family moved out of state, both for distance from the sense of wrong that lingered and for Aster's sister to comfortably live near her university's campus. Aster stayed behind, clinging to the house and what memories it kept. He could not bear to leave and lose it all, everything he had ever experienced and loved with Jack at his side all those long years.

 

Jack's own family stayed a year longer.

 

Though it may have always been irrational, he had always felt it was improper for him to hurt as deeply as he did. Jack's family took the loss hardest of all, and for their sake he kept his pain hidden away, feeling it unjust to lose himself to the pain when they had to be taken care of. They were his family, too.

 

He boxed up his pain and let it lie in the shadows of his mind where it could be left to wait. There was such endless hurt knifing like slow, blunt teeth chewing into his heart, but he withstood it, because to face it was to acknowledge that Jack was gone.

 

When the time came for what remained of the Frost family to pack, the three of them did it together.

 

He sat on the floor pulling apart the bedframe, fingers too tight on the screwdriver. No one spoke- the radio sat on the windowsill, contributing nothing. Jack's sister folded shirts and her mother mopped away the dust. And when they had all finished and some of the boxes had been put into his own room, and the U-Haul had pulled away and so had  the white mini van and the goodbyes had at last been exchanged and Aster had been left to lock up the house, he gave the long halls and the empty white room one last pass, finding a maze where there had once been easy, straightforward passage. Jack's room, empty and still, felt wrong and so he turned away, left the Frost's old house and entered his own next door.

 

Standing at his room's window, gazing past the glass into what was once Jack's room, he was sure that for a short moment he caught a flicker of motion, a quick blur of a pale something in the glass's reflection.

 

.

 

Aster turns twenty-two and though his body has filled out and his height has reached its peak, he looks unhealthier than he has ever been. The hollow dark beneath his eyes smudges when he touches it, dragging his fingertips and darkening the rest of his face. The slump of his proud shoulders tell of a loss to great for even him to bear- how foolish he had been in his youth to think himself strong and able when he cannot so much as cope with a death not his own.

 

In his sleep, he speaks. He is not aware of it until the day he falls asleep during a Skype video call with his sister. When he wakes the call is disconnected, but she shows up the next morning holding two coffees and an expression of careful concern. She tries explaining to him that he needs to move on, that he needs to leave the house and find life again, but he will not hear any of it. He smiles and nods, pretending to understand and agree, and once she has left he returns to his sleep. Only this time, he sets up his laptop on his desk's edge, webcam set to record.

 

Two weeks pass before he is brave enough to watch the footage.

 

“Jack,” He says, always. The camera's feed is blurred with distance and dark, but the rough shape of his form is visible: he turns onto his side and throws out an arm, shifts onto his back, neck and legs straining to lift himself from the covers. He closes in on himself, legs against his chest, fingers reaching out to clutch the spare pillow on his bed. “Jack?”

 

After every soft call of the name, the camera's vision blurs, and though the audio and view is weak when Aster turns up the volume there is the faintest suggestion of static _answering_ him.

 

Aster deletes the footage.

 

.

 

The first time Ana comes to the house, she sits on his sofa and stares absently around, hands clasped in her lap. Aster offers her food and drink and she declines politely, asking for him to sit. She looks ill-fitting in the drabness of his home.

 

Eventually she stands and goes up the steps, taking note of each hall and doorway. Her gait strengthens as she enters his room and stops directly before his window. Her hands hang limply from her sides, held out a short ways from her hips, like she does not want them touching.

 

She touches the windowsill, finds it absent of dust. “This is where it started.”

 

“Yes.” Aster confirms, shaken. He has not told her about this.

 

On her third visit, Ana goes directly to his room. She unlatches the window andclimbs through to stand on the thin ledge. She looks taller in the outside, braced on tiny feet and cold air. Her hair rustles in the January winds, nose going red and breaths puffing out to show sharp concentration.

 

Aster stands close by, indoors, not daring to join her but keeping a hand out on the ledge just in case. “Careful.”

 

She looks around, then across the space at the window that was once Jack's, close enough to stretch out a leg and stand on the emptier ledge. The view inside is blocked by heavy red curtains. When she climbs back inside, she sits at his desk and shuffles through his papers idly, not quite looking.

 

“There is something here. You were right.”

 

Swallow hard. Block the tears. Don't ask for specifics. Aster sits on the edge of his bed. _There is something here._ He forgets the rules and asks anyway. “Is it him?”

 

Shrugging thin shoulders, Ana shivers and pulls her coat's collar tighter around her neck. “I don't... I don't know. He won't let me see him. I catch glimpses, but never enough.”

 

When she turns her eyes on him to examine his posture and expression, he goes perfectly still. “You weren't with him when it happened. You feel guilty.”

 

Aster doesn't look at her. He affixes his tongue to the roof of his mouth and bottles his breath back into him. “Is he mad at me?”

 

Ana's gaze slides away. “I don't know.”

 

.

 

The house gains a life of its own- they both do.

 

A newly married couple moves in next door. Aster musters no effort to make their acquaintance. Childishly, he resents them for being happy and unaware, for taking the place of people who mattered to him.

 

His own house stays the same, but in the nights there begins to grow an uneasy eeriness. If he listens closely in the nights he cannot sleep, he can hear it perfectly: sliding in through the spaces under all his closed doors, there are soft sounds of movement.

 

His lighters go missing. Going to bed, he hears a creak on the staircase. In the kitchen, the sink struggles, spits out choppy bursts of water instead of the long, steady streams it was designed to release. This one he does not notice, but when observed from just the right angle outside, all of the roof's red shingles have been arranged into a familiar pattern.

 

He attributes all this to the drugs. The packets lie partially hidden in the drawer of his nightstand. The little aluminum sheet of white tablets is nearly emptied; he must get more soon. The longer he goes without the less rest his mind gets.

 

**.**

 

The ceramic mug on the table scalds his hands. Ana's fingers are curled loosely around the chipped white handle, cautious of the heat and simultaneously daring to touch the tips of her fingers to the steaming side. Astute and observant, her eyes frighten him. They remind Aster of villainous cartoon characters with crazed, dedicated gazes. It's rude to think it; she is here to help him and has been very kind so far, but still he wonders if it is a tactic she uses. Does she purposely aim that gaze to intimidate him, her client? Does it work to heighten his sensitivity, scare him into telling the truth?

 

“Tell me more.”

 

Aster makes no move to drink, even as his company takes a long swallow of the hot brew. “It started two years ago.”

 

“Two years is a long time to wait.”

 

He nods, feeling scolded.

 

“Why?”

 

Aster drinks and burns his tongue on the brutally hot coffee. The new, raw sting on his tongue is punishment he deserves. “You probably hear this all the time.” He starts, a weak attempt at humor, or explanation. Not both. He glances down at his cup, then his fingers, the table's old scuffed wood; tears burn at his eyes. “I don't want him gone.”

 

Ana frowns, and leans across the table. Pressing a jeweled hand over Aster's, she looks hard into his eyes, and the look is both an assessment and consolation of his loss and a wake up call: it is time to face the facts. Her eyes have gone a cold rose tint, the complexity of her irises like the facets of a diamond. She feels like a haze of perfume on his skin, there in a sudden cold spray and then dissolving to a fine mist, gone. Aster is suddenly compelled by an urge to grab her, stop her from disappearing.

 

“You must remember you are still breathing.” She tells him.

 

“What if I can't?” He asks.

 

The medium gives him no answer.

 

Retracting her hand, she settles back into her seat and folds her hands over her cup, and stares over Aster's shoulder, seeing something he does not.

 

“Tell me what he was like.” She prompts.

 

 **  
**.

 

A theory: he is imagining everything.

 

Every single thing that has happened has been the effect of his desperation to see Jack again. He has been dead two long years now and Aster is still in agony over the pain of losing him.

 

Sometimes he still tries being rational about the situation.

 

Maybe all those scientists are right, the ones who dismiss the notion of ghosts and the paranormal with charts and proven facts. Ghosts are the effects of grief, of fear, of loneliness. They come from disruptions in the surrounding electromagnetic fields, caused by surging rampant energy in storms and technology and his own, unused. Every thing that he has seen, every thing that has happened has all been a product of his mind's desperation to see Jack again.

 

In his desperation for answers he scours the Internet. There are professional, clean sites and then there are the kind that look like an outright joke. There are plenty of the latter, never enough of the former. He reads anyway.

 

 _Electromagnetic field (n.):_ a physical field produced by electrically charged objects. It affects the behavior of charged objects in the vicinity of the field. It extends infinitely through space and describes the electromagnetic interaction. One of the four fundamental forces of nature.

 

Electrical fields, Aster tells himself, are affecting his brain and solely responsible for his hallucinations. There is no such thing as ghosts, and there is no such thing as half-tangible memories that shimmer in the daylight when he touches them, and there is no such thing as being haunted.

 

On good nights he is able to convince himself this.

 

He lets the cold needle slip from his slack palm and lies on his side, sluggishly kicking off his shoes. His body warms quickly, loosening enough for him to lie pleasantly against his mattress. The hand he feels smooth through his sweaty hair is a _hallucination_ , a physical memory of something he experienced years ago.

 

Sometimes he is less rational and turns to other explanations.

 

He goes to the local bookstore and lingers with his head down in the supernatural section. Ignoring the flashy titles, Aster searches and accumulates a stack of books: on astral planes, on sensing spirits, on known mediums and clairvoyance. Not one of them goes out of the store with him, but he huddles down behind the bookshelves and studiously flips through each.He learns about Daniel Dunglas Home, Edgar Cayce, Jeane Dixon. All mediums who claimed to possess powers of prophecy, levitation, and contact with the dead.

 

 _Clairvoyance (n.)_ : the supposed faculty of perceiving things or events in the future or beyond normal sensory contact.

 

Aster wonders if Ana really does see spirits. She does not seem the type to lie for benefit, but so many do these days. Isn't it better anyway, to lie and tell someone what they want to hear?

 

.

 

North builds him a white noise machine- currently it lies just outside his doorway, and tonight no odd steps in the hall or openings of a window's latch rouse him. He dreams as always of static. And when he is wakened, it is in that curious way in which one who has grown accustomed to silence suddenly is called back to consciousness in a rush of adrenaline and alarm, having heard his first sound that was not his own.

 

.

 

On Easter, he goes to the black alley and ducks past a rotting doorway. The building is crumbling and old, but the basement has more or less held up well. There is little light; before he can make out if the place is empty or not there is a step to his side and a laugh. His spine stiffens like a cat's.

 

“Back _already_ ?”

 

Aster scowls. He's safe, just barely. He fishes the money out of his pocket and throws it on the floor by his feet. “Just give me what I came for.”

 

There is a cluck of pity, or disapproval. “Hand me the payment first.”

 

“Get it yourself, you know where it is.”

 

Pitch's voice snaps close to his ear. He has never seen the man's face, but it is not hard to imagine a devil's fangs, eyes that spell destruction. After all this time all he has been allowed to glimpse is a voice and a name. “ _Hand. It. To. Me_.”

 

Aster clenches his fists, and bends slowly to retrieve the money. He struggles to place it into an invisible palm, and when their hands finally connect he drops the cash and yanks away fast. Pitch laughs again, steps close enough to press a packet into his coat pocket, and is still laughing as he leaves.

 

**.**

 

There are no visits over the summer. Ana explains this to him in her office. Summer is one of her busiest seasons: urban explorers and foolish youth go out in droves. They find abandoned buildings and take along cameras and handfuls of batteries, fuel themselves with drinks and smokes and pills. They bring any sightings back to her for professional consultation: it is not her preferred line of work, she admits, but it is money.

 

Aster understands.

 

He spends the summer with North. They work in the shop, quiet most of the time but always in a short semblance of comfort. They go camping once, and it is almost like everything with Jack never happened. Like everything is normal again, and when he goes home Jack will be waiting, perched in his window.

 

“Things are going better, Aster?”

 

They're sitting on a dock, feet hanging bare off the sides and skimming the water's surface. It is hard to miss the hope in North's tone.

 

“Sure.” Aster says, showing teeth.

 

In July, he has trouble sleeping. He is roused by the crack of fireworks and finds himself staring at a tall, cloudy haze near his doorway. His body freezes. He feels anxious. It is watching him.

 

When he scrambles back against his headboard, which clatters back against the wall, it disappears.

 

.

 

Aster wonders if the neighbors hear echoes.

 

Do they hear sweet laughter come from a time where there was cause for it? Do they hear it and think of beautiful blue eyes, lips that knew no frown? Do they look skywards and think _surely there is a way to get up there, surely there must be a way to find_ _what's_ _been lost?_

 

Do they hear echoes of a call, like he does?

 

.

 

The medium surprises him with a visit in late September.

 

Aster does not get visits. He ignores the knocking on the door and knots the elastic band around his bicep, clenches his fist and injects smoothly. The effects work in fast; he drops the needle clumsily onto his nightstand and watches as it clatters over his materials. The spoon is bumped and brown liquid drips from its curve. He knows it will stain the furniture, but his mind dissolves into a euphoric haze and he finds he does not care. Aster wraps the sheet around himself and holds it tight enough to prevent any air pockets.

 

When he comes to Ana is seated next to him, looking tired. He smells vomit: when he sits up to look around, he finds no mess. His nightstand is clean, needles and cottonswabs gone. There is a pillow wedged carefully under his back, curling him onto his side. Shame heats his temples.

 

He wonders if her feet touch the floor, the way she is sitting. He knows she got in through the window, like Jack used to.

 

.

 

They drive to a suburb thirty minutes outside the city. The ride is quiet. Neither attempts turning on the radio. Aster is hungry and exhausted, but still so cowed from Ana's demand that he seek help that he doesn't dare complain.

 

“Why do you do it?” She asks. Her fingers fiddle with the seatbelt, adjusting it over her smaller form. Aster has not had a passenger in months.

 

“I get anxious.” He explains. “I can't relax on my own.”

 

The sky past his windshield is gray. It's going to rain soon, and neither of them is prepared.

 

“There are safer ways to do that. You're not doing it for the high?”

 

Aster switches on his blinkers and merges into the leftside lane. Traffic has slowed to a crawl: up ahead, there are cop cars and an ambulance. He looks in his rear view mirror and sees people peering out of their windows, getting out of their cars and climbing onto the doorsteps to see what is causing the congestion. “I don't mean any disrespect, but I don't see how that's your business.”

 

Ana does not back down. Her eyes scorch his, then slide down to his arms, where he has covered his tracks in flannel. “I care about my clients. I see grief every day. I get people willing to delude themselves into thinking there's something where there's nothing. I get people willing to follow what they lost. I help as much as I can. If it means seeing them smile again, I'll go the extra mile.”

 

“Smile?” Aster asks, but she will not answer.

 

An hour later they pull off the highway and Ana directs him through the streets, and Aster finds himself pulling into a tiny parking lot. A small, clinical looking building sits nestled in a little grove.

 

“I don't need this.” Aster protests, gritting his teeth.

 

“You do.” Ana opens her door and stretches out as rain begins to dot the pavement. “You said you needed to relax. I have a better way for you to do it.”

 

He's already driven this far, and as foolish as he feels Aster can't leave Ana stranded here without a ride home. He follows the medium inside. She talks to the receptionist and they're ushered politely towards a room in the back, a yellow door with a simple plaque that reads SANDERSON.

 

Ana knocks, and the door opens to reveal a little man of rich gold eyes, skin and hair. He leans up with a delighted smile to kiss Ana's cheek in greeting. When he smiles curiously up at Aster, he has to wonder if all mediums are of small stature.

 

Inside the room, there is a comfortable looking bed set on a dais to the side of a large a window, accompanied by a plush armchair. Candles in protective jars line the sill and soft music plays in the background. Aster steps back. What has he just walked into?

 

“Sandy is a friend of mine.” Ana explains, pulling off her scarf. “He's an expert in sleep hypnosis.”

 

Aster's jaw loosens a little in disbelief. Before he can stutter out a 'no thank you,' the little man has grabbed him by the wrist. He is pulled to the bed, where it takes a moment for him to decipher the hand gestures' meaning.

 

Following them, Ana pulls off her shoes and settles into the armchair. Her eyes have lost the stoniness from their earlier argument, but there is a slight guard Aster sees in them, damming up whatever she might deem unprofessional (perhaps the laugh she is so obviously struggling to hide). “Relax, Aster. You're in good hands.”

 

 **  
**.

 

He starts up Skype.

 

Aster immediately sets his status to ‘offline.’ The last thing he needs right now is North trying to video-chat with him again and ask those questions that beat around the bush but scream ‘ _i'm_ _worried about you_ _._ ’ He is grateful for their concern, but it gets suffocating fast.

 

He ends up falling asleep before doing anything at all. He’d meant to call his sister, but the exhaustion of recent events has left him weak and dull-eyed, and these few hours of rest have him feeling a little better off. He falls asleep like it is no trouble these days; his eyelids slip closed and he is utterly gone to the world until his body decides it has rested enough.

 

_Dreams- a half-memory of Jack in his bed, another one of the two of them at the cinemas and watching that box-office hit Jack had been so intent on seeing, Jack’s feet, pale in the beach’s sand on summer break-_

 

When Aster wakes he moves to shut off his laptop, wiping haphazardly at his eyes. It is far too late to call anyone now, he thinks, checking the digital clock on his screen after logging in.

 

He looks to his sidebar and notices the chat is crowded with several messages in the chat box he left open from where he and Jack had last spoken.

 

It is a ritual for him now, reading their last shared messages when he misses the boy most. Done daily, it is to remind himself that Jack was real, once, that he is not a perfect dream waiting only in darkness.

 

12/29/11 7:11PM: Aster: thought your family was going out of town for break?

12/29/11 7:12PM: Jack: changed their minds. going ice skating tomorrow if you wanna come

12/29/11 7:12PM: Aster: wish I could. got a paper I need to write.

12/29/11 7:13PM: Jack: k, i’ll be at your place later then

 

He freezes when he notices the various _new_ messages he received while sleeping. Except the thing is he hasn’t received them. They have been typed into his own laptop. The sender’s name- _his_ name proves that.

 

Someone has been typing into his keyboard while he’s been sleeping.

 

 _But how?_ Who?

 

A look around his room shows no sign of disturbance. He goes out into the hall and downstairs and finds nothing. The door, the windows... everything is still locked and closed, like always.

 

He goes back to his room and looks at the screen again, stunned.

 

5/7/13 9:26PM: Aster: ast

5/7/13 9:26PM: Aster: r

5/7/13 9:26PM: Aster: aster

5/7/13 9:28PM: Aster: im her e

5/7/13 10:04PM: Aster: Ims till here

 

He closes the laptop immediately and calls Ana.

 

By the time he gets to her apartment, he is in a cold sweat and still in his pajamas. By the time he opens the laptop, the messages are gone.

 

He did not think to take a screenshot.

 

.

 

Halloween approaches. He holds his breath; he is not superstitious, but he has read things. The Americans believe in monsters, vampires, werewolves. The Mexicans believe in spirits returning for a visit. Is this what he is waiting for?

 

Feeling apprehensive, he does not put up any decorations. He buys candy and puts up a sign only because it means voices in the house, smiling faces and laughter that will liven it up for at least a few seconds longer.

 

Halloween comes. Ana comes to his apartment dressed in a lab coat, the pockets filled with sugar-free candies and toothbrushes. They go for a walk along the streets and she coos over tiny vampires and pirates, and Aster offers what smiles he can.

 

He used to be good with children. Now they only remind him of what he lost.

 

In the park, they sit on the swings and share the candies she has brought, and she tells him she has wanted to be a dentist since she was seven.

 

“What stopped you?”

 

“I became an orphan.”

 

“Oh.” Aster says, and she smiles loosely, the warmth not reaching her eyes.

 

Aster crunches a drift of leaves under with his shoe and drags his toes backwards to shred them underfoot. The sound is like ice breaking, but more forgiving. He listens.

 

“You lose something and you're okay after a while. You look for it, and you don't find it but that's okay, you can move on because it can be replaced.”

 

Ana hands him another candy. “You lose someone, and they take part of you with them. Maybe you find them again, maybe you don't- but either way, you'll never be the same person you were when you had them. Things change- you hurt all the time and you don't know how to stop it.”

 

The park is quiet. Past its paint-chipped fence, groups of giggling children in spooky garb ring doorbells and examine front-yard decorations, tugged gently along by their parents when they linger too long. Aster watches a Darth Vader squabble over candy corn with a wizard.

 

Ana watches them, twisting a golden wrapper between her fingers. She is without jewelery today, and without it her hands look smaller than ever, bony and sparse. “I saved myself, but in the process I let myself fall too far. Now I'm paying for my dues.”

 

He cracks the hard candy between his teeth. The separate parts he tucks against the roof of his mouth.

 

She looks at him. “You have to realize recovery is an option, Aster.”

 

Halloween passes. Nothing happens.

 

.

 

He remembers teeth, white, even. He remembers fingertips, the prints long arches. He remembers cracked heels, narrow soles. He remembers skin that flaked in the colder months, patches of goosebumps all along arms, and neck, and calves. He remembers lips that roughened in the cool winds, left trails across darker skin that seared and blazed. He remembers smiles. He remembers laughter. He remembers fun. He remembers family, and early mornings that he woke to find his window open and a body sneaked eagerly into his sheets, eyelashes thick fringes of innocence on round cheeks.

 

He remembers-

 

he remembers

 

sitting at a wide window, and a sky like dust, blue-gray chalk. He remembers fingers intertwined with smaller, thinner ones, a smaller head tucked into the alcove of his shoulder. He remembers winter, and a pale hand that traced an arc over fogging glass, dragging streaks through the cloudiness and circling glittering specks in the distance. He remembers doing the same, and mouthing long names and histories into hair, bleached like bone. He remembers no clouds, no rain, no snow.

 

He remembers cold. And he remembers stars.

 

.

 

A dream: static in his ears.

 

It is not visible, but he can feel it. Tickling like a loose thread against the inside of his ear, making him shiver and flinch away. It dips in volume and it sounds like a radio frequency, a bad connection: crackling pops and buzzy distortion in the background, a TV that has been left on all night, a dead phone call, a lost voice on a forgotten station.

 

When he moves his hand to push the sound away it only grows more insistent. Similar to the pins and needles itch of a numb limb, there is a spike of discomfort in his left arm and he gasps at the shock of it, not unfamiliar to the sensation but still unused to it. There is another on his cheek, and that is when he wakes up.

 

It goes on ringing in his ears; he sits up and wipes sweat from his temple, and because he falls asleep quickly from sheer exhaustion he does not notice the red print of a thin hand on his arm.

 

This time, the static warps into half-formed syllables, but the words never clear.

 

“What are you saying?” He asks, and there is the sound of an answer, but for all his efforts it cannot be decoded.

 

**.**

 

Ana soon finds out about his stargazing habits. Happily, she joins him. Neither one comments on how quickly she has ingrained herself into his life. He does not mind it, but he thinks it a little out of her area of profession. Does she do this with all her clients? Does each one require her incessant care, sweet hand and consistent calls in the morning to make sure he is still breathing?

 

They lie back on a fleece blanket and he teaches her to identify Gemini.

 

“I didn't know you were such an astrology buff.” Ana laughs, and it surprises Aster to hear the tone of pride in her voice, like someone watching their best friend come in first at a competition of talent.

 

Understanding his silence as embarrassment, she nudges him gently in the side, rolling a little closer. “Show me more.”

 

Taking her hand is easy; holding it is a trial. He forces his fingers to stop their shaking with a firm grip, and guides her finger over the celestial body above them. Finding the stars, he connects them with her finger and draws out their shapes slowly, one by one. He teaches her the constellations he finds. Cancer. Canis Major. Canis Minor. Auriga. Pegasus. Orion. Perseus.

 

He does not let go of her hand after. Her nails are long: they press gently into the meat of his palm.

 

“You did this a lot together.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Her eyes are on the sky. He imagines her as a bird, colorful as her clothing, reaching to kiss the stars and fly along their patterns.

 

Aster lets go of her hand.

 

.

 

Blinking. Awake, then not, then drowsing back towards consciousness and letting the cycle begin again.

 

His vision blurs as his lids droop. To his right there is a blob of yellow, a small hand patting his shoulder and weaving through the warm air. It shoots down, a comet, and then loops upwards and back, fingers raised, a bird. Anything with wings and a destination in mind.

 

Murmur of a voice, Ana's, in the background.

 

Rustling of blankets. Silence.

 

Awake, then not.

 

.

 

At work, Aster settles. He breathes in the comfortable sawdust and puts his back to the heater's mouth and paints. North works almost too fast for him to catch up some days, but today he matches the pace like it's nothing.

 

Quick swipes of paint like the glide of a brush through hair. Up, down, sideways. They turn on the radio and bicker over what station is best for studio work. North wants Russian classicals, Aster wants oldies. They alternate during commercials. His foot jiggles under the table, boot thumping up clouds of sawdust.

 

When he leaves, North calls Aster's sister.

 

“Things go better now, I think.” He says.

 

**.**

 

The same day, Ana drops by. She brings Aster a scarf she knitted, a gift.

 

“I didn't know which one you liked best,” She says, fretful, touching the threads of gray and white embedded in navy, “So I just chose a few. Is it long enough?”

 

Aster stays silent. He rubs his thumb over the heavy wool and lets the pad follow the patterns. The narrow stretch of blue is half his height. It is dotted with softer hues. Cracks of white, thin and delicate, dotted with tiny asterisks.

 

He bows his head as she moves to wrap it around his neck and helps her tie it. The foremost flap that hangs off his chest is adorned with a flattened W, Cassiopeia. Around his neck, there is a hint of Ursa Major, and Cepheus.

 

“It fits.” Ana breathes.

 

Aster traces the W with his fingers. Ana drops her arms from around his neck and fidgets. When he thanks her, she looks like she could cry.

 

She hugs him instead.

 

.

 

His dreams become quiet.

 

He wanders down a dark corridor. It goes on for miles; he feels framed pictures on the walls and doorknobs, but there is no light to reveal them.

 

Down the hall, he hears someone crying. He breaks into a run and wakes, never reaching the sound.

 

**.**

 

For some time, his nightstand remains clean and unopened.

 

Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday he and Ana drive out to Sandy's clinic. Before, he was uncomfortable with them watching as he slept. He wonders if they ever see him jostle in his bed the way he does at home. In Sandy's office, does he still moan in agony and call out for Jack?

 

He is afraid to ask. Neither of them ever mentions anything of the sort, so he lets it be.

 

There is a little diner a few blocks down from the clinic. After every session, the three of them huddle in a greasy booth and order sandwiches. Aster learns that while Sandy is not very talkative, he is almost as much a trickster as Jack once was. Ana is chatty and optimistic. When she catches Aster smiling, she confuses him. Is she glancing at his teeth, or at his lips?

 

.

 

Knowing that he will return home to silence fills Aster with dread.

 

He stalls at his doorstep until he decides he is being silly. Pushing the key into the lock and stepping inside, the first thing Aster senses is the cold. As he shrugs off his jacket and hangs up his scarf, he realizes there is an uncomfortable rigidness to the house's air, like there is someone here who does not want to see him.

 

At the foot of the stairway, he peers up and calls out “Hello?”

 

There is the sound of a door quietly clicking shut, then silence.

 

.

 

It's a while before Ana has enough space in her schedule to come by again.

 

“I'm sorry.” She says as Aster lets them both into the house, hands and reddened face dwarfed by her hat and gloves. “I didn't think I'd be so busy this week.”

 

“It's fine.” Aster reassures her. “Coffee?”

 

They bought some Starbucks earlier, but that's long gone by now. Ana accepts the offer. They take their time pulling off their coats and stamping slushy snow onto the welcome mat. The rustlings of their coats and shirts almost sounds too loud to Aster. He has gotten too used to the quiet, the sounds of only himself.

 

“Is decaf alright?” Aster asks, leading Ana to the kitchen. He goes to the coffee machine and pulls out the beaked pot. When he sticks it under the faucet, no water comes out.

 

He hears slow footsteps.

 

“Ana?”

 

The medium stands frozen in the doorway, looking hurt and unsure. When she looks up at him, her eyes follow something behind his back and over his shoulder and her frown deepens. Aster's spine shudders heavily.

 

“I should go.” She whispers.

 

“We just got here!”

 

Too upset by something to reply, Ana dashes back into the living room. Aster drops the pot into the sink and runs after her. The medium is fast- she has already thrown on her jacket and stuffed her hat and gloves into her pocket by the time he catches up and takes her wrist.

 

“What's wrong? Are you okay?”

 

Ana pulls away quickly. She unlocks the door and throws it open, gives him one last look that pleads for forgiveness. “He doesn't want me here. I'm sorry.” She says, and bolts.

 

Left alone in the emptiness of his own home, Aster gives up on making coffee. He climbs the stairs slowly like some new weight has been slung over his shoulders and slumps at his desk. The chair creaks even when he does not move.

 

He asks the house, the empty air, his room,

 

“Why are you doing this?”

 

and receives no response.

 

.

 

He begins to spend less time at home.

 

Ana offers him her couch, and he accepts without hesitation. He is afraid to go back. He is afraid to see what lies waiting him, what new anger has pent up beneath those floorboards, in his bed. If Jack is angry at Ana, then all that cold disdain lingering under his doorways when he comes home must be for _him_.

 

The realization deadens him.

 

“I'm sorry I ran out on you like that.”

 

Aster watches her pick at the frayed cuffs of her jeans. Her apartment is moderately sized. The walls are pale and lavished with pictures- clients, she tells him. The happier ones like to send photographs as some form of thanks. She never says no.

 

“What did you see?” He asks.

 

“He's angry.” Ana says quietly. The ' _at you_ ' is obvious. “He was...so angry. I couldn't bear it.”

 

Aster nods mechanically. Somehow, he knew.

 

Ana accompanies him when he goes to get his keys and a few changes of clothes. By the time they have both set foot into the room, he panics, remembering the mess- but she has already seen it, and she has already side-stepped his stretched out arm, a barrier.

 

“I know you're using again, Aster.” She says. “You don't have to hide it.”

 

He turns away from her. The needles lie haphazardly about his nightstand, lighter and greasy spoons smearing chemical messes onto the unpolished wood. A half-finished cup of coffee sits underneath the lamp, its surface questionably filmy.

 

“I do it to relax.” He repeats, just like the first time, and a clot of guilt rises in his throat. He turns back to her and she has stepped closer now, clutching her elbows as she peers up at him. If she senses something in the room she does not tell him, but he can see that something bothers her. She takes small steps, curls herself up tight and slides her gaze all along the room. She rubs her thumbs against her arms.

 

Aster doesn't know how to put it rightly. He knows she has seen some of his past, but has she seen the details? The whys and hows and wheres, the words and hurts?

 

He takes a step towards the nightstand. The mess is disgusting. His boot knocks a bottle by the side of his bed. He changes his mind and faces the medium, upset. “Ana- I can't bear it. I hear him in my head. He's _scared_.”

 

She shakes her head, reaching out to touch his arm, opens her mouth to comfort and he breaks, but does not pull away. He lets her maneuver him so that he sits on his bed and she wraps as much as she can of him into her arms, silent, steady.

 

“He was afraid of the dark.” Ana says. She knows this- she read it in her second visit, spotted the glow in the dark stars Aster salvaged from Jack's room, kept in the box of books and posters that once dotted those bare walls.

 

Aster nods. The action feels violent, disorients him. “I think about him out there- in here, wherever he is- alone- I can't live with that. I see the stars at night and I want to rip the sky apart- I want to find him. I want him _back_.”

 

He laughs too loudly, coughing past his tears. “Ana, I want him back again. I don't want him to be afraid.”

 

“Everyone's afraid.” Ana murmurs mildly, her lips in his hair. “Some more than others.”

 

“No. You don't understand- you don't _understand_.”

 

Aster lapses into tears. The needles on the nightstand glint temptingly, offering a high and a temporary relief: distance from where he is now, sanctuary from the crushing thoughts of Jack lost and alone, without guidance, without light. The images have plagued him since Jack's death. Again and again, every time he closes his eyes: Jack pale and listless, running from darkness only to stumble into it head on. There has been no respite from it since day one.

 

He feels Ana's lips in his hair whispering soothing words. He can't hear them over the blood rushing in his head. “He _needs me_. He can't be alone out there- I can't let him. He was alone when he died- I should have been there! I should have been there to save him.”

 

“We'll help him.” Ana reassures Aster, her own voice breaking. “Aster. We'll help him. It's alright. We'll help.”

 

“Please.” Aster begs, and though Ana does not know what he pleads for she murmurs “Yes.” to him, and strokes his hair until he quiets and stills.

 

.

 

Early December. He wears the scarf daily. The first time he walks into the shop with it on, North stops him to get a good look.

 

“Very nice.” He says. Craftsman to the bone, he ruffles the fringe and notes the patterns. “Gift?”

 

“From a friend, yeah.”

 

He is at his painting desk when he realizes what he has said, and why North beamed at him so.

 

 **  
**.

 

The first time they kiss is when they are en route to Sandy's.

 

They pull into a Citgo for gas. The area is lonely, suburban. Aster pays for pump number four and Ana holds the nozzle to the tank.

 

“Have these visits been helping?” Ana questions.

 

 _Sandy's, or yours?_ Aster wants to ask.

 

“Yeah.” He says instead.

 

Her smile is radiant. So much about her is earnest. A finger of memory taps at the base of Aster's spine.

 

“I'm so glad.” Ana says.

 

When they are back inside the car, Aster twists to buckle his seatbelt. A small hand takes his jaw and draws him into a kiss that tastes like lipstick and caution.

 

Underlying that, there is _hope_.

 

.

 

He sleeps better only in Sandy's office, but he does not mention this to the little hypnotist or the medium. North knows about the visits and his new routines, and has several times expressed his joy over Aster finally changing (seeking help).

 

They sit grouped up at his desk one night. The bulky Russian drags over his own chair and takes up a paintbrush to mimic Aster's strokes.

 

His scarf is draped carefully up on the coatrack. On his side of the studio, aging photographs line the walls and magnetic boards. The nicer ones are framed on his desk.

 

North smiles at one of Jack. His cheeks and nose are red with cold and he wears two hats, his own buried underneath Aster's floppy pom-pom cap (a gag gift from his sister). The captured smile gives Aster's heart such a physical ache he grinds his teeth to bear it.

 

“I miss him too.” North sighs sadly. “I cannot blame you for all your hurting, my friend. Life without him seems quieter.”

 

 _No,_ Aster thinks. _I hear him in my dreams. I hear his bare feet every night on my carpets, and I hear his fingers drag over my hair when I read. It feels like ants crawling on my scalp. It feels like I've finally found him._

 

_The world hasn't gone quieter without him. It's just gone duller._

 

_._

 

He and North take the bus to Ana's apartment. Sandy is already there when they arrive, seated comfortably on a plush pile of cushions. Ana readies the television, fumbling with DVD cases.

 

“I can't believe you haven't seen Elf, Sandy.” She mutters crossly. “You threw back my whole lineup! We'll have to save- Aster!”

 

Apparently she had not known of his arrival. She shouts his name like a warning and jumps, hair almost bristling. North stifles his amusement. Sandy falls back onto the cushions in silent laughter.

 

“Crikey.” Aster says. “Sorry, I thought you knew I was here. Didn't mean to scare you.”

 

She smooths her hair down and goes red. “No, no, it's fine. I just get jumpy when it's cold out.”

 

“Thanks for inviting us.” Aster murmurs to her. North shakes Ana's hand and introduces himself, bowing a little like the show-off he is.

 

“Any friend of yours is a friend of ours, as well. Please, makes yourselves at home.” Ana chirps. She looks eagerly back and forth between him and North, as if their years of friendship are that visible. She brandishes a hand towards the television, which flickers onto a film's main menu. “What do you think? Are you a fan of Will Ferrell?”

 

Aster has no idea who that is. He says as much and gains a look of astonishment even from North, who mutters “I did not know this” darkly, like it is a slight to his very being.

 

“That,” Ana says, taking Aster's coat and scarf (she flushes when she notices it's the one she made) and directing the two of them next to Sandy, “-is incriminating information. You're under house arrest until you've seen this and Bewitched.”

 

He stumbles back into the cushions and seats with Sandy, gobsmacked. “You're not serious.”

 

North tosses his head back, laughs, and nudges Sandy's elbow. “I like this woman.” He says.

 

.

 

Aster stays when the others have left. He helps clean up popcorn and dirty bowls and stacks DVDs neatly into their cases.

 

“Thank you.” Ana sighs, sagging against him momentarily. She weighs next to nothing against him. The weight is familiar. “Did you like Bewitched?”

 

“I liked Nicole Kidman.” He admits truthfully, and the medium laughs and swats his shoulder. The apartment is quiet, but not in the way that Aster's house is. Everything is still, but not eerily so. He can hear the night's traffic outside past her windows, a hush sound.

 

They are close enough to kiss. Ana's eyes in low light are deep, purple. Her eyelashes are long. “Good enough.”

 

She tips up onto her toes and that is their second kiss.

 

.

 

They find each other's scars.

 

Hers are two thin stabs between her shoulder blades. His are horizontal slices across the insides of his elbows.

 

Neither explains. The story behind his is predictable enough, but hers she refuses to give. When he asks, she melds their mouths together and pushes him onto his back, drawing a line over his chest that says __no__ _._

 

.

 

Life becomes a whirlwind and shifts without pause into a hurricane.

 

In the center of it all, Aster kneels gripping his elbows. He is perched on ice and there is _hate_ in the wind. It blisters his cheeks and twists into something else, hurt.

 

.

 

When he goes back to sleeping in his own house, he finds his lost lighters.

 

Four of them, each still in good shape and hardly used. They lie innocently on the kitchen counter where his mother used to dice vegetables like they have been there all along.

 

He tucks one into his pocket and the other three into the silverware drawer. He pictures a slim figure darting on stolen wind across his halls and thoughts and his eyes sting. So many months have passed and he has lost sight of what he started out to do in the first place.

 

Jack is here, but he is still _lost_.

 

“Thank you, love.” Aster leaves the kitchen and sits on the stairs. He flicks the light over and over again and talks to empty air. His chest constricts with each tiny spark. Guilt thickens his throat.

 

“I miss you. _So_ much.”

 

In the morning, the lighters are gone again.

 

.

 

The night Ana stays is the most violent.

 

Aster brushes his teeth, careful not to look his reflection directly in the eye. He spits and rinses off his toothbrush, and the second he has turned away is the very second Ana has exited the building.

 

The mirror cracks, and bursts.

 

Too stunned to make a sound, he flinches away too late and his right shoulder catches the brunt of the damage. Shards the size of his index finger fly past and shatter a second time on the opposite wall and on the floor; the smaller pieces dust the bathtub.

 

Hissing in pain, feeling faint at the rage behind the glass, he becomes unsteady and uses his good arm to cling to the towel rack, staring incredulously at the new mess. This is the most activity he has seen all at once- they have come far past missing pencils and displaced cups now.

 

“Jack?” He calls out.

 

In the kitchen, there is a loud slam of an object against a wall, glass exploding.

 

The sound is vicious. Aster spools toilet paper onto his hand and presses it to the ragged top of his shoulder, grimacing at the hot seep of blood onto his hand. There is another slam, closer to the bathroom this time, and in his fear he wishes it were an intruder, a thief. He knows what this anger is from.

 

“Stop it!” He shouts past the door, cradling his wound. His nerves crackle nervously beneath his chilled skin.

 

This time, the blow is upon the door, and it rattles, doubled in intensity. Startled, Aster puts his palms to the door and pushes back, afraid that whatever it is out there (but he _knows_ WHO it is) means to harm him.

 

It is not hard for him to picture two fists clenched tight against the woodwork, an angry pallid face.

 

Aster puts a foot against the door, just in case. Does he have that much force?

 

“You need to _stop_.” He repeats more firmly. “You're scaring me, love. Please.”

 

The blows cease.

 

When he has courage enough to leave the bathroom, an hour has passed and he is a little less afraid.

 

He steps into the kitchen and finds two broken glass tumblers shattered upon the floor. One is clean, empty. The other is the one from which Ana drank last night.

 

.

 

He tells no one of the incident-

 

and if he cries himself to sleep immediately after and does not wake until dawn with eight new messages in his voicemail and a mess of liquor on his floor, it is because of the guilt.

 

The self-loathing comes after.

 

.

 

The static returns to his dreams.

 

Aster has to listen hard for it. Where it once lent itself willingly to his ears now there is nothing, only faint traces. He stumbles through the corridors and presses his ear to a wall. There is that sobbing again.

 

“JACK!” he shouts. He knows now. He knows.

 

A screeching burst of feedback like that of a misplaced microphone dazes him. He flinches away from the wall and flattens his palms against his ears. Warped and ugly, no longer calm, the static drones erratically beneath the screeching.

 

Aster wakes up and finds soft glowing lights penetrating the black night in his room. His iPod's dock station warbles brokenly on an abandoned frequency. The TV has clicked on to a news station. His phone's light brightens the room's ceiling.

 

Warily, he gets up and turns each one off. The iPod refuses to obey; Aster all but smashes down on the power button and it skips to Transatlanticism.

 

Unsettled, biting back tears, he unplugs the dock. The iPod stays on, mute.

 

“I know you're angry .” Aster whispers. He grips the device tight. Is Jack watching him right now? Is he listening? “I'm trying, okay? You know I love you.”

 

He scans the room. Everything is still. Breath comes haltingly to his lungs. “Don't you?”

 

The iPod does not turn off until the battery has run out. The screen stays on the image of a black bird tangled in red.

 

.

 

A two week long absence from his routine ensues. Ana, North and Sandy have all left several messages. Ana has tried visiting twice, North three times. Each time, Aster lay still in his bed and played dead.

 

He keeps the window locked and shuttered so that Ana cannot see or get inside.

 

When he shows up at the medium's office on Tuesday for their daily drive to Sandy's, she does not smother her surprise or worry. She launches herself at him and the scolding he gets for 'disappearing' is fierce.

 

Sandy only watches him enter the sleepy little room with sad eyes.

 

He does not say a thing, but he understands more than most. Sometime, Aster will have to ask him who, or what, he has lost.

 

.

 

Aster finds the house still and silent when he returns. He is the only remnant of his childhood left in the city- Jack is gone. Both their families are gone or dead, their old classmates moved out of state or distant in the neighboring suburbs, busy with family.

 

Going up the steps to his room, he sees a figure waiting at the top for him and his heart _stops_. A desperate sob bubbles from his mouth, wet and choked.

 

“ _Jack_?”

 

The figure turns and vanishes around the staircase. Aster flies up the steps, taking two at a time and calling out for him to stop.

 

When he rounds the banister Jack is gone, and the door to his room is open and the wood beneath his palms is slick and cool, like tears have been painted along the surface.

 

“I'm sorry.” Aster pleads to the walls around him. “Come back, please.”

 

He enters his room and nothing is amiss.

 

“Come back. Please. Jack, come back. I'm sorry. I'm so- I'm sorry. Please come back.”

 

He can't stop talking. He talks until he finds the strength to bury his face in a sweater and block off his air supply, and scream.

 

.

 

When he does paint outside of work anymore, it is stars. Blobs of white and gray against blue and black. Long fields of flowers that stretch on into darkness. Lonely houses on lonelier plains. Always a small figure running somewhere in between.

 

.

 

Nine AM. His phone alerts him of a missed phone call.

 

He gets up, and he showers. Dresses, eats and cleans up the mess he made last night. The empty bottles he stacks into a bag, tosses into the recycling bin behind the building.

 

He takes the bus to North's. He works until nine PM, and then he takes the bus back.

 

 **  
**.

 

Ana senses something wrong but for all her prodding she does not get a word of explanation out of him other than “I just haven't slept well.”

 

So she takes him to Sandy's, and while the hypnotist is good at what he does, it does not distract from the heavy sense of sadness that has settled this time more permanently into his bones.

 

 **  
***

 

She waits in the coffee house.

 

Maybe he is running late. Maybe he just did not want to get out of bed. Maybe he did not check his phone, maybe he is crying, locked in his bathroom where the water runs to drown out his noise.

 

Ana forces herself to order, and checks her phone again for a reply.

 

At that moment, Aster slides into the seat across hers and she goes dizzy with relief.

 

“I need to tell you something.” Aster says, and her body tenses again.

 

She has seen loss more times than she will ever care to recount. She knows that look of defeat. It stabs her directly in the chest and twists.

 

“Please don't.” Ana whispers.

 

Aster takes her hands. He looks normal in the cafe's backdrop. Just a man waiting on his afternoon coffee.

 

“It's not that.” He says. “I just wanted to thank you for what you've done.”

 

“This isn't thanks.” Ana argues, but she keeps her hands in his. She remembers him in the late dark of her bedroom. Exhausted spine and bloodshot eyes. Hands that know stars and lips that still belong to someone else. She remembers the reading of his hand and the immense crack she had found in his palm, where all the love had seeped way down to cluster in his marrow and leave his outside dry.

 

What a love she has seen, and it does not belong to her.

 

She forces herself to stare at him though her vision blurs fast. “This is a goodbye.” She accuses.

 

It should not hurt when he was never really hers, after all.

 

For a moment he has the decency to look stricken. “Ana, you saw in my head. You felt what it was like. I saw your face, after- you've helped me in more ways than I can count. I can't thank you enough for it.”

 

“What difference does it make if I can't prevent tomorrow?” She asks. She caught his backtracking just as fast as he did.

 

His palm rubs her cheek and her face crumples. They lean across the table together and he embraces her. The table, she thinks, with its smooth round edges and cold exterior, is what she saw in the reading too. A boy with hair that went white and a laugh like the sun. Palms that knew to caress like nothing ever did. Elbows dry and sharp, fingers quick and careful. Cold. Separating.

 

Oh, Ana thinks, it was such a mistake to accept him as a client. They have not ever gotten anything done.

 

“Maybe in another life.” Aster suggests into her ear. It is evident he has begun to cry. “Things could have gone better.”

 

She grips his long-sleeved shirt and shakes. She won't cry. He is not a lost cause. There is promise in him, she has seen it. “Please don't go. I can help you. I _can_.”

 

He kisses her. She tastes emptiness and it is worse than before. “I'll call you tomorrow.” He says, moving out of her grasp. “First thing in the morning.”

 

He does not get far. Ana tears away from the table, forgetting her purse. She shouts his name and he fidgets with his keys. Their bodies collide against his car when she reaches him.

 

“He won't be there waiting for you.” She sounds ridiculous, unsteady. The parking lot is icy and barren. January will end soon. “Don't you understand?”

 

Aster's keys crunch against her hair when he puts his hand to her nape. “I'll find him.”

 

.

 

At home, Aster draws the blankets around himself and hunkers into the warmth. The house is silent and unmoving. He remembers a time when it was loud and lively. When Jack was not an apparition. A beautiful, solid thing.

 

He feels an itch along his scalp and arms and pictures a hand threading down his skin and hair.

 

“You wait there for me, love.” He mumbles thickly into his pillow.

 

The nightstand is messy. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy ~~early~~ Halloween. Don't go looking for ghosts, any of you.


End file.
